The fluorescent lamp dimming switches have been on the market for many years. Because of the new prominence of LED lighting into the market, a need for LED lighting dimming controllers has emerged. LEDs are ideal light engines for dimming because their efficiency is maintained and even improved over a wide range of light outputs and dimming increases the operating life time LEDs.
Typical dimming controllers used in fluorescent lighting are installed with a 2-wire high-low control system, also referred to as current sink topology. Dimming controllers installed in this fashion are incompatible with the LED drivers that operates with a current source topology. Accordingly, in-wall dimming switches used for controlling fluorescent light can not be used to control dimming LED lighting drivers with LED light engines. Further, where dimming controllers are wired to control dimming of LED light engines, fluorescent light engines can not be dimmed using the same dimming controllers.